Killer Summer

by Ridley Pearson

  He made his way to the Cessna, keeping his eyes on the Lear.

  Always account for the enemy.

  Reaching the Cessna, he quietly popped open the passenger door and leaned across the pilot’s seat. He activated the battery, set the radio to 121.50, an emergency frequency monitored by all commercial aircraft, and put the headphones to one ear.

  While it was possible that the hijackers were monitoring the jet’s radio, John felt making the call was worth the risk. Nonetheless, he stealthily aimed the barrel of his rifle through the Cessna’s partially open door at the jet.

  He pushed the TALK button.

  “Mayday! Mayday!” he said in a husky whisper. “Aircraft down. Hostage situation. Request immediate law enforcement at Mitchum’s Ranch on the Middle Fork of the Snake River. Repeat: Mayday! Mitchum’s Ranch on the Snake.”

  He released the TALK button and listened.

  If anybody was out there, the response would be immediate. The crackling static in his ear suggested he’d not been heard.

  He repeated the call, listened anxiously for a response. Again, nothing.

  He waited several minutes and tried yet again.

  This time, the headphone popped with a male voice breaking through the static.

  “It’s summertime. I know you can hear me, cowboy. Summer… time! No more prank calls. Get off this frequency. NOW!”

  Summer. Time.

  Two silhouettes appeared in the jet’s aft door, one unmistakably female. It appeared the girl had a knife held to her throat.

  John sighted the man’s head through the scope and considered the tight shot. The man changed angle, putting the girl between him and the Cessna. John lowered his rifle and put it on the ground.

  74

  Three to four hours to go,” Brandon said to the other two men, slipping his GPS device back in his pocket. He was riding a chestnut filly with a blond mane, a showcase quarter horse with a gait as smooth as a Cadillac’s. All three riders wore headlamps, a bluish glare illuminating the narrow trail ahead.

  “How long can the horses keep up this pace?” Walt said. He was not a regular in the saddle.

  “Longer than you can,” Brandon said. “They can trot for hours, they’re fine. But it won’t be too much longer now before we have to walk them, anyway. Terrain’s not getting any better.”

  “We’ll ride them ’til they drop,” Jerry asserted.

  “No, we’ll walk them,” Walt corrected. “And we’ll hike the last half mile without them so they don’t give us away. They’re our way in. They may be Kevin’s only way out.”

  Jerry was turning in his saddle to object but nodded instead. “Yeah, okay.”

  The sudden agreement silenced all three.

  Brandon consulted the GPS.

  “Looks to me like the trail runs out pretty soon,” he said.

  “First light,” Jerry announced.

  They’d agreed that their best odds of reaching Mitchum’s Creek Ranch unseen was to cross the Middle Fork before sunrise, before four A.M. Daylight diminished any element of surprise considerably.

  Walt thought unlikely they’d meet this worthy goal. They had to hobble the horses, inflate the raft, and make the crossing-all very time-consuming.

  “This guy Sumner,” Brandon said, “he made Mastermind, right?”

  “He produces movies,” Walt said.

  Something sparked at the back of his tired brain. A voice was shouting at him. But whose was it?

  “You think if we get his daughter out safe and sound he’ll make it into a movie?”

  “Put a sock in it,” Jerry said.

  Walt tried to focus on the voice in his head. It wasn’t Fiona’s voice, it wasn’t his own. It definitely was a man’s voice… Something about movies…

  “What about Mastermind?” Walt said, trying to stimulate whatever had prompted the mental itch.

  “It was so-so,” Brandon said. “Fairly predictable.”

  “It was a heist movie,” Walt said.

  Flickers of an earlier conversation… The voice belonged to Arthur Remy.

  “Absolutely. Horse racing, hitting up the track on the day of the biggest race of the year. The bad guy stole the movie, the Mastermind guy. He was the best thing about it.”

  “But he had his fifteen minutes. You’re aware of that, right?”

  Walt had it. He reined his horse to an abrupt stop. Brandon reined his horse but Jerry’s kept trotting.

  The satellite phone rang as he was reaching for it. His mind was elsewhere as he answered.

  “Dad!” Walt called out to Jerry, who still rode on.

  “Stay with him!” Walt said to Brandon. “Stop him if you can. We ride together.”

  Brandon passed Walt the lead rope to the pack horse as Walt spoke into the phone. The bluish hue of Brandon’s headlamp disappeared into the curtain of tree trunks.

  “It’s me,” Steven Garman answered back, his voice just audible above the growl of an engine “I’m at nine thousand feet, directly over the river.”

  Walt had heard a small plane not twenty minutes earlier. He’d switched on his phone and had caught a signal briefly. The phone had buzzed repeatedly with incoming messages. The connection was lost before he could check them.

  “I’ve got the repeater on board and up and running,” Garman said. “Damn, if the thing didn’t light up about five minutes ago.”

  “I had reception about twenty minutes ago. Didn’t last long.”

  “I’m talking five minutes ago. I’m well north of you. Didn’t last for me either.”

  “Kevin?”

  “Could be one phone… could be ten. I had the hit only a few seconds. I came around and headed upriver, throttling back to limit engine noise. I’m now a mile west of my earlier route. I’d like to get closer and try again.”

  “Only one pass,” Walt said, “as quietly as you can, directly over the ranch. See if the repeater gets a hit. If it lights up, then circle and try to hold the connection. I’m going to start calling Kevin’s cell from the sat phone and hope I get through.”

  “Copy that,” Garman said. “Turning for the ranch now.”

  Walt was about to punch in Kevin’s number when he realized that it would take Garman a few minutes to get in position. That gave Walt time to make another call first.

  He punched in the numbers and hit SND.

  75

  Come down from there, boy,” a man’s deep voice called out.

  Kevin shuddered, cold and scared and unsure what to do. The cowboy had told him to shoot if he were discovered in his rooftop hiding place, and yet by all appearances, the cowboy had led them to him.

  As if reading his thoughts, the cowboy spoke.

  “Forget what I said, son. They’ve got Summer. I surrendered my weapon. We need you to come down.”

  Kevin’s back to the stone chimney, he replayed the message, focusing on weapon and need you. Was there a subtext to the cowboy’s message? Was Kevin supposed to come down shooting? Was he supposed to hide the shotgun for later? He was shaking so badly he couldn’t keep his hands still.

  “We’re not going to hurt you… or anyone.” He recognized the voice as the copilot’s. “We’re only interested in the plane.”

  The plane?

  “We know you’ve got a shotgun. I’ve got Summer in front of me. Lower the shotgun down to me, and then we’ll get you off of there.

  “This is no time for heroics, Kevin,” the voice continued. “No one’s getting hurt unless you start something. You hear me?”

  If the copilot had Summer, that left the two others with the cowboy. They likely had his rifle and pistol.

  Can I get a shot off, maybe two? Maybe even drop one of them? With Summer as their only bargaining chip, would they dare hurt her?

  “Do as he says, boy,” said the cowboy with resignation in his voice. “They don’t mean no harm to us.”

  He and Summer had gone through too much to surrender now.

  “Kevin, they mean it,�
� Summer called out.

  He felt for the extra shotgun shells, slipping one in each sock. Doing it made him feel like this wasn’t surrendering.

  “Okay!” he called back.

  The copilot came around the side of the building, his left arm slung over Summer’s shoulder and tightly across her chest. In his right hand was the cowboy’s handgun.

  “The shotgun first,” he said.

  Kevin wasn’t about to provide them with another weapon. He swung the gun against the chimney like a baseball bat, busting it at the hinge. That left the three men with the over-under shotgun loaded with bird shot, and the cowboy’s rifle and handgun.

  “That was unnecessary,” the copilot hollered, his voice brimming with anger.

  Kevin climbed down. The small guy took Kevin by the arm, roughed him up as he took away the flashlight and knife.

  “Easy,” the copilot chastised.

  “I owe this kid,” Matt said.

  As Kevin was led away along with the others, he glanced surreptitiously up at the chimney. No one had thought to check up there.

  If they had, they would have found his cell phone, tucked onto a high chimney rock, its red NO SIGNAL flashing.

  High above, a shining star flickered, then disappeared in the black velvet backdrop of space. A moving object had blotted it out. Farther along, another star flickered, disappeared, then reappeared.

  Unseen by any human eye, the phone’s LED began blinking green, just as it had done ever so briefly only minutes before.

  76

  The impenetrable coal-black sky bled to the color of a fresh bruise as it surrendered to the first photons from a faraway morning sun. It held a luminescence not unlike the ocean depths where the last vestiges of sunlight mingle and fade. Soon the ashes of the Milky Way would shrink to a mere brushstroke, leaving only named constellations and the planets battling for recognition.

  At four-thirty A.M., Fiona should have been in bed, savoring a final few hours of sleep. Instead, she, along with Teddy Sumner, had hung around the Sheriff’s Office, awaiting word of Walt’s rescue attempt, her stomach in a knot. When asked if she would fill in for the videographer, she agreed solely because of the subject matter: Teddy Sumner. Walt had requested an interview with the man.

  The interview room, directly across from Walt’s office and one of three down a long hallway, had a metal table bolted to the floor and metal chairs. Two fluorescent tubes lit the room too brightly. Fiona and her tripod-mounted camera kept to the far corner, a close-up of Sumner’s tortured face on the screen.

  Deputy Gloria Stratum read from a card, declaring the date, time of day, location, and who was in the room. It was noted that Sumner was submitting to the interview voluntarily.

  Sumner was nodding. Fiona saw an acceptance on his face that she didn’t understand.

  “You understand this interview is at the request of the sheriff,” Stratum began, reasserting what had just been said.

  “Yes. I’m aware that timing is critical. You people have no idea what this is like for me.”

  Fiona watched the close-up of his face as his pain intensified. She braced herself, realizing this was no simple Q &A.

  Stratum shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

  “You understand: I know what’s going on,” Sumner said.

  “The sheriff… I realize this is a bit unorthodox… but the sheriff asked that I say just one word to you. He wanted me to add that the best chance he has to rescue your daughter requires full disclosure…”

  Sumner pursed his lips until bloodless white and nodded solemnly.

  “Mastermind,” Stratum said.

  She then waited for some kind of response.

  “That was it,” she finally said. “The one word he wanted me to say. Mastermind.”

  Sumner was flash-frozen by what he heard. Then his lips twisted and a wave of relief seemed to melt his agonized expression.

  “I…” he started, then trailed off. “The point is… No one knows what it’s like…”

  His eyes flashed at the camera angrily. He was addressing it, not Stratum.

  “Trying to hold this together without her mother, trying to reinvent the wheel and get something going… In this economy, no less. Are you kidding me?”

  Stratum said nothing.

  “But, here we are, right?” he continued. “I want to help her. If I don’t do something now and it’s later determined that if I had… If it gives the sheriff an advantage…”

  “It comes down to money, right?” he continued. “Love and money. How fragile it all is, how quickly it all changes. All you ever want to do is protect her, take care of her, keep her out of trouble. Steer her away from the things that are only going to make it harder and push her toward the things that make it easier… college, good friends. Build her a solid foundation to stand on. Am I right?”

  He jerked back in his chair so abruptly that he went out of frame of the camera. Fiona widened the shot, noticing in the process that her finger was trembling.

  “Mastermind,” Stratum repeated.

  He looked up at Stratum, up at the camera, and winced.

  “They say I’m a one-hit wonder, did you know that? You know what it’s like to hear that said about yourself?”

  He closed his eyes slowly, shook his head, opened them, managed another smug grin.

  “To stay in the game…” he continued. “There’s a level of play that I don’t expect you to understand, but it’s critical if you’re going to see the A scripts, if you’re going to have a chance at the big projects.” He leaned forward across the table, the camera laboring to keep him in focus. “A bridge loan, that’s all.” He was shouting by now. “ ‘ Nothing to it!’ he said.” Sumner snorted. “Nothing to it…”

  He exhaled and looked around the room anxiously. “He’s a clever man, your sheriff.”

  “He’s a keeper,” Stratum said.

  Sumner put his hands behind his head and stretched. His neck made a popping sound. It wasn’t fear in his eyes but anger, a man pitting himself against the world. Fiona cowered into the corner.

  “Okay,” he said. “Pay attention.”

  Again, he was addressing the camera directly.

  Fiona pushed herself farther into the corner, her back flat against the cool wall.

  “I first met Christopher Cantell when we were developing the script for Mastermind. He was brought in as a paid consultant.”

  Fiona threw her head back and it hit the wall with a thud. Sumner’s eyes ticked in her direction but only briefly. He looked back into the calm, unresponsive face of Deputy Gloria Stratum and said, “Ransoming the Lear… That was my idea.”

  77

  As the sky passed from faintly maroon to sapphire, the forest interior remained dark as night. Kevin and John were being led down the log steps to the airstrip and river beyond. Kevin had never known such darkness, his heart heavy with regret, his limbs jangled with frustration. He and the cowboy walked along in silence, the rush of the river constant and growing louder like ringing in his ears.

  He assumed the plan was to lock the two of them in the Learjet. He didn’t know what they had in mind for Summer, but just the thought of that made him angry at the cowboy. They should have put up more of a fight than they had.

  They reached the flat, graveled plain of the riverbed. Kevin spotted the pilot on the riverbank with a raft and some gear. As they walked closer, he could see it was an established put-in.

  Upstream and down, towering cliffs formed a gorge through which the river churned, opening only briefly here at the ranch. Kevin saw it for what it was without an explanation from John, whose body language was becoming increasingly agitated.

  “You’d better provision us well,” John said. “The first take-out is four days downriver.”

  “We’re well aware of that,” said the pilot. He was holding John’s handgun.

  “And a snakebite kit and a water filter-”

  “Enough! You’ll have what we give you. Be happy w
e’re not leaving you tied up here to starve. That option was seriously considered.”

  “Without sunblock and a tarp, what you’re offering will be worse than starving-”

  “I said shut up.”

  The two hijackers exchanged a look that, even in the dark, Kevin understood.

  “They don’t care,” Kevin said. “They just want us out of here. They’d rather the river kill us. That way, maybe it won’t be called murder.”

  “Shut your trap.”

  “Y’all plan to scale the face of ol’ Shady,” the cowboy said. “I saw the climbing gear all laid out.”

  “None of your business,” the copilot said.

  “Taking the girl?” the cowboy said.

  “You’re not getting the point,” the copilot snarled.

  He struck with lightning-quick speed, a single blow with the gun to the back of the cowboy’s head. He was shorter than the cowboy, and the blow connected just above the neck.

  The cowboy lurched forward but remained conscious and retained his balance.

  “What I was trying to tell you,” the cowboy struggled to say, “is that you want to take the north route if you’re going with the girl.” He caught a breath. “There are two routes up that face, and although the south route appears easier from the ground it’s far more difficult at the top. The girl won’t make it unless she’s an experienced climber. In fact, none of you would. And watch out for the hawk nest on the north route. Half the time, those damned birds are in that nest and will come after you like they mean business. The other half of the time, they’re in the air and will attack from behind. This time of day, they’re in the nest. And you ain’t seen nothing angrier than a hawk when its nest is disturbed.”